


Reciprocity

by inkedinserendipity



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: 2. rita and juno moments, 3. sappy early morning jupeter content, Hurt/Comfort, Other, featuring: 1. nureyev and carte blanche crew bonding, just disgusting amounts of loyalty and love, protective carte blanche crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29445120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/pseuds/inkedinserendipity
Summary: One confession prompts another, and in the span of a night Nureyev resolves to be rid of the THEIA forever. But he isn't about to have all the fun on his own.(A Valentine's Day fic for Julia nex_et_nox!)
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 9
Kudos: 89
Collections: TPP Valentine's Exchange





	Reciprocity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nex_et_nox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nex_et_nox/gifts).



> Happy Valentine's Day, Julia! I tried to fit all three of your prompts in one, and absolutely did not realize that the premise I'd picked was one you'd joked about in one of your works until three-quarters of the way through, so cheers! Anyway, "there's poison in your head" is one of my favorite works in the Penumbra fandom, so we'll call this a tribute to that as well as a gift fic.

The moment the door closes behind them, Juno throws his arms around Nureyev, grinning broadly. “See?” he says. “See? I told you! I _knew_ it!”

“Hardly seems an apt time to say _I told you so_ , my dear detective,” Nureyev laughs, but the sound is watery, and Juno hugs him harder. “I can’t believe—I’d hardly….”

“They knew you, Nureyev,” Juno interrupts fiercely. “Sure, they heard a different story than the one I saw, but they _knew you_. And now they know you even better.”

“It appears they do.” 

He sounds breathless, still stunned. Juno leans back, not bothering to disguise the fact that he’s tearing up, and unsurprised to find Nureyev in a similar state. He reaches out and wipes one of Nureyev’s tears away with his thumb, the other hand cupping Nureyev’s cheek. “I’m proud of you, Nureyev,” he says fiercely.

“Juno,” he says, quiet but just as fierce, “thank you. Without you, I…thank you, love. Thank you.”

So shoot him, Juno wants to keep talking about this, because he _knows_ how difficult that was for Nureyev — confessing his true name, and to his childhood heroes no less. Hell, it was hard enough for Nureyev to accept the fact that _Rita_ knew, and while he and Rita are friends, it’s Buddy and Vespa and Jet that Nureyev’s idolized since he was a kid. It’s them that he idolized back when Peter Nureyev was still the only name he knew. 

But Nureyev still looks overwhelmed, so Juno stuffs that bright, proud feeling in his chest into his smile as he tugs Nureyev toward their bed. He sits, clears a space for Nureyev to sit too, and as he reaches for Nureyev’s makeup wipes he watches a reminiscent smile creep over Nureyev’s face. If Juno had to guess, out of all their reactions—Vespa’s indignant recognition, Jet’s calm surprise—it’s probably Buddy’s that’s brought Nureyev’s smile back in full-force, her cheerfully surprised acceptance of an Angel in their midst. 

He’s proud, too, that Nureyev is letting himself _feel_ this, now, the lingering anxiety and relief, rather than stuffing it away. But that is a conversation for a different night. Nureyev, he knows, has exhausted talking about himself for the next three days at least.

“Damn it,” Juno grumbles, fumbling with the clasp on Nureyev’s makeup wipes. The curse pulls Nureyev from his daze, and a fond smile bubbles across his lips as he takes the wipes from Juno’s hands. “You know,” he says, grin turning smug, “at market they advertise these as childproof. Good to know they’re being truthful.” 

“Hey!” 

Nureyev laughs and leans forward to kiss him. Juno, fighting to keep the pout on his lips, lets him. 

Nureyev opens them without looking, and Juno scowls as he snatches them back, the fondness never leaving Nureyev’s expression. Nureyev sits back, closing his eyes, and for a moment Juno’s overwhelmed by his trust. Even as Juno clears the day’s makeup, and the streaks under his eyes, Nureyev doesn’t flinch from his gentle movements once.

Eventually he sets the wipes aside and lies down. He kicks off his shoes and curls onto his side, pressing a kiss to Nureyev’s forehead, still glowing with a pride he can’t quite figure out how to express. He knows how difficult that was, how nervous Nureyev was for it, and it went so well. He’s so, so proud.

Nureyev lies beside him, then takes one look at him and laughs, pulling the blankets up around their shoulders. “Your internal monologue is running strong, I see,” he says warmly. 

“I know what that took,” he says quietly. “I’m just really happy for you, Nureyev.”

Nureyev curls closer to him, eyes slipping closed. Juno pulls his glasses from his face and leans over him briefly to set them on the bedside table, and a murmured word from Nureyev dims the lights.

Around them, the engines of the Carte Blanche hum. The lights in the hallway fade, clomping footsteps passing by their door as Vespa retreats, followed less than a minute later by Buddy’s graceful heels. Somewhere in the distance, Rita’s laughter shrieks out, and Juno settles further under the blanket, comfortable and warm. 

He doesn’t even realize his eye has closed until a light touch on his cheek startles him awake. Nureyev smiles, a little sheepish, and murmurs “Sorry.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing in particular,” Nureyev says. Juno raises an eyebrow at him. Were he concentrating, Juno knows he could have lied much better than that. Juno doesn’t think a day will pass when he is not grateful that, for him, Nureyev lets his walls drop. “I…suppose that wasn’t a very good lie.”

Juno snorts. “I’ve heard better.” 

Nureyev doesn’t rise to the bait, though. Instead his touch threads through Juno’s hair, his palm resting on the curve of Juno’s jaw as he thinks. Then he takes a breath and says, “After Miasma, after Hyperion, there was a long time when I thought I would never have a name again. When I thought I would simply...become no one at all.” 

Juno whispers, wounded, “Nureyev....”

Nureyev shakes his head slightly. “It’s in the past, love. What I mean to say is, with — all of this, I am Peter Nureyev, now. More than I have been since I was a child.” 

Juno nods, trying to figure out where Nureyev’s going with this. Nureyev gets on his case often enough for monologuing, but Nureyev’s hardly one to throw stones, with how his attempts at honesty meander off their intended path. 

“Those months after we left each other’s company were lonely, yes. But then we found each other again, and I found this crew, and they know my name, and I am so grateful for it. For you.

“But you, Juno....” Nureyev’s hand traces up his cheek again, drifting along the tip of his cheekbone, where the scarring starts. “I have no idea what happened to you after you left. All I can see are the scars.” 

Juno makes himself laugh. “What makes you think anything happened? I collect scars all the time.”

“Love, please.”

Juno fights off the urge to bat Nureyev’s hand away. Because he doesn’t really want to tell this story. Hell, he doesn’t even like thinking about it, and he’s the one who lived it. Doesn’t really want to talk about how he let the man who ruined his childhood collar him like a dog, doesn’t want to talk about how he nearly helped upend an entire city, about how he’d very nearly hurt Rita. 

But by now Juno knows the difference between what he wants and what he needs, so he sighs, intentionally unwinding the tension from his body. He’s grateful the lights are off. 

In his hesitation Nureyev brushes a thumb against the corner of his right eye and murmurs, “If you’re looking for somewhere to start, love, I know what electrical scars look like.”

Right. Of course he does. He may not know what the scarring on Nureyev’s body looked like before he had it removed, but of course Nureyev would recognize it on Juno.

Juno takes a shaky breath. “Are you sure you don’t want to just, y’know, leave this night as is? It’s a big night for you, Nureyev, and I don’t want my baggage to ruin it.” 

Nureyev levels a flat look at him, then softens it with a sigh. “If you don’t want to talk about it, Juno, I won’t ask it of you again tonight. But you’ve helped me so much, my dear detective. If I can return that favor, even a little....”

“We’re not keeping score, Nureyev. We’ve talked about this.” 

“This isn’t keeping score, love. I want to help you.”

“Counting favors is kinda the same thing as keeping score, Nureyev, both of them involve—”

“Love,” Nureyev interrupts gently. “You’re deflecting.”

Nureyev waits. His touch stays on Juno’s cheek, grounding, until Juno reaches up and takes his hand.

“Okay,” he sighs, lacing their fingers together. “Okay. Fair warning, though, for this story, we’re going to have to go way back.”

* * *

There is much, much more to Juno’s story than Nureyev had anticipated. 

He’s not blind to the scars: the pale streaks around his missing eye, his more-pronounced limp, the knife wounds and laser scars and dozens of clusters of discolored skin. But he had never even imagined....

Juno had mentioned, after the night of Zolotovna’s ball, that Hyperion City had turned against him. Nureyev had not realized quite how honest he was being. 

And that mayor. O’Flaherty, Nureyev recalls, once called Jack Takano. There is a part of him, vengeful and protective, that wishes he were still alive if only for the pleasure of killing him himself. Ripping out one of Takano’s eyes himself, perhaps; an eye for an eye, wasn’t that the old Earthen expression? Nureyev finds he rather likes the ring of it.

But such musings are pointless, because O’Flaherty is already dead. There is nothing Nureyev, nor anyone else on the crew, can do to exact vengeance now.

Nureyev forces himself to breathe deep, past the belated rage, and focuses instead on Juno’s face, the lines of grief and exhaustion that had deepened during his story now relaxed in sleep. 

Nureyev reaches out again, resting his fingertips feather-light on the corner of Juno’s jaw, focusing instead on the bold lines and brave curves of Juno’s face. They’re just as striking now as they were at Zolotovna’s ball.

He is too used to seeing those features contort in the throes of a nightmare. O’Flaherty is dead, true. The project that he’d spearheaded, however — the development of the THEIA Souls....

Nureyev leans forward and presses a kiss to Juno’s forehead. Quietly, carefully, he stands from their bed and retrieves his glasses. He picks up the pad of paper they keep on their bedside table – Juno’s idea, after the first time his absence from their bed sent Nureyev into a panic – and leaves Juno a note informing him that he’s gone to seek the Captain’s advice, and that he should be back before morning.

He makes it to the doorway before Nureyev turns back. For a few moments, he just watches: the steady rise and fall of Juno’s chest, the loosened sprawl of his limbs, so unlike how he slept during their imprisonment with Miasma. Juno feels safe here, he knows, aboard the Carte Blanche. Feels safe with Nureyev. 

That is not a gift Nureyev intends to let go to waste. 

* * *

“Three in the goddamn morning,” Vespa grumbles, rubbing at her eyes, and glares when she sees Nureyev sat at the head of the table. “What the hell are you doing, that’s Buddy’s chair!” 

“For today, I’ve decided to cede it to Pete, darling,” Buddy says, patting the empty seat next to her. “This is his plan, after all.”

“Better be a damned good one,” she scowls, dropping herself into the chair and her head onto her elbows. “As I said. _Three in the goddamn morning.”_

“Oh, it’s a good one, darling,” Buddy says, her grin full of sharklike glee. “Perhaps one of the best.” 

“You flatter me, Captain, but I can’t take credit,” Nureyev says, smiling at Rita. “Rita had most of it laid out already.” 

“Yeah, I’ve been thinkin’ about it for a while!” Rita chirps, her face full of cheer. Far too much cheer for — as Vespa mentioned — three in the goddamn morning, but Nureyev’s hardly going to complain. If they’re going to pull this off without waking their beloved detective, they don’t have much time.

Steady footsteps announce Jet’s return. “I have charted our course to the Obelex Scrapyard, Captain,” he reports, and takes his place at the table with a nod to Nureyev. 

“Thank you, darling. Pete?” 

Nureyev takes a breath to steady himself. His gaze passes across the table, across each member of their little family, all looking awake and determined despite the late hour.

For a brief moment, Nureyev wonders if Juno knows how much this little family would do for him. Rather ruefully he thinks Juno has no idea. He never quite seems to understand the loyalty, the protectiveness that he inspires.

Just as well. He’ll never see this one coming.

“I mentioned already the connection of this plan to the THEIA Spectrum and Soul,” he says crisply. Under his palms, the table’s finish hums and flickers to life, projecting half-a-dozen three-dimensional maps of the Obelex Scrapyard. “If we succeed, such technology will never be used again.”

Nureyev walks them through the layout of the Scrapyard, from their intelligence on the guards to the schematics leading to the Core. Afterward, Rita talks them briefly through the rest of it: how the Obelex Scrapyard is the perfect hiding place for a resurrected THEIA tower, how she wouldn’t have even noticed it if not for the fact that it was owned by one Moira Hashemi, a name she recognized from the owner of the design documents on the original Souls.

“And if we can get these little bugs into their system, it’ll blow up all their documents for good!” Rita finishes proudly, holding up two flashdrives. “I’ve been workin’ on it on-and-off since we stole the Curemother Prime. Turns out the fact that all the THEIAs know each other is a weakness just as much as it is a strength! Because that means that if one of ‘em forgets something, all the rest of them forget it too!” There’s a giddy viciousness to her voice that scares Nureyev. “They’re goin’ down real hard, and this time, for good.” 

* * *

The ship’s internal clock ticks past 0600 hours just as they land on Obelex. Jet, in the cockpit, keeps the landing as gentle as possible, so as to let their detective sleep. 

It is all a little surreal, Nureyev reflects, as the crew gathers in the cargo bay. Only seven hours ago, Juno was telling him of the Souls, nails digging into his hands as he tried desperately to keep his voice from breaking. Only six hours ago, Nureyev was coaxing him to sleep with quiet murmurs and fingers tracing gently through his scalp. 

Now their whole family stands in the docking bay, excitement thrumming behind calm demeanors. Again Nureyev has to wonder if Juno has any idea how much their family would do for him.

Again, he highly doubts it.

Nureyev smiles, unable to help himself as he bares his teeth. Besides, it isn’t all about Juno. For reasons that the whole crew now knows, he takes a rather _personal_ interest in any technology that could wipe out the dissidence of an entire city. Attempting to create that kind of technology on a global scale — well. Buddy’s always going on about her family doing what they can to help those in need throughout the galaxy, and what better way to do that than tearing this place to the ground?

“You look quite eager to be on the ground, Pete.” 

Nureyev blinks back to himself, head tilted to the side as, behind them, the hatch of the Carte Blanche swivels open. “Indeed, Captain. Perhaps it is unprofessional of me to be so invested in a mission, but....”

“Personal stakes,” Buddy nods, flashing him a grin that he recognizes as the one he’d worn just moments ago. “I understand. Good luck. Jet?” 

“Ready, Captain.” 

“See you and Vespa on the ground, darling,” she says to Pete, clapping him briefly on the shoulder before pulling out her blaster and leaping lightly to the precious small patch of stone peeking up through the mess of twisted metal below. 

Nureyev watches them land, then turns to Vespa. “Ready?” 

“Don’t even have to ask,” she says, and does a backflip on her way down. 

“Best of luck, Rita dear,” he calls, and does the same.

* * *

Nureyev presses his back to a relatively smooth plane of dimeritium, head cocked to the side as he tracks Buddy and Jet’s progress across the scrapyard. The landscape makes stealth fairly easy. All around them, sharp spires of twisted metal corkscrew up toward the sky, the crumpled latticework of buildings from planets all throughout the Outer Rim cross-hatching the meteor’s atmosphere.

Nureyev draws his knife closer to himself, tense as a squad of THEIA-equipped guards approach Buddy and Jet’s vantage point. He can feel his heart pounding, the flashdrive he’d stowed in his chest pocket pressed against him. Call it sentimentality, but it’d felt like taking a small piece of Juno with him, even if he could never really be replaced.

Gunfire breaks out near Buddy and Jet’s position. Nureyev sinks to a crouch as Vespa pulls out her comms. “Bud? You all right?” 

_“Peachy-keen, darling. You and Pete be ready to move on our signal — Jet, eyes on your two, dearest — and we’ll play sentry while you infiltrate the core.”_

“Got it, Bud. Be safe.”

She closes the comms, then sits next to him with a sigh and leans her head back against the metal. Nureyev, intentionally unwinding the tension from his limbs, does the same. 

“You know,” she says eventually, as the gunfight continues in the distance, “of all the stupid things you could’ve waken me up for at three in the morning, this…wasn’t a bad one.” She scuffs her feet against a collapsed I-beam. “Actually kinda glad we get to do this, to be honest. That stupid goddamn eye had Juno messed up pretty bad for a long time.” 

Nureyev hums as neutrally as he can, his grip tightening on his blade. He knows bits of Juno’s stay at the lighthouse following his surgery, but he wasn’t there for it, and a familiar protective anger surges in him at the thought.

Metal shifts as Vespa looks over at him. She clears her throat, a little awkward, and Nureyev looks at her. She faces forward again. 

The gunfire slows to potshots. No call comes through on their comms.

Just when Nureyev’s accepted that she’s given up on whatever she was going to say, Vespa sighs and grits, “Makes a lot more sense now.” 

“Come again?”

“That you’re the Angel.” 

Nureyev’s throat goes dry. He is still unused to this, other people knowing his name. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.” 

Vespa growls deep in her throat. “I grew up on Ranga, idiot. You know that.” She tosses her knife between her hands. “Thought you’d be older.” 

“I…am surprised that you put enough thought toward my identity to even guess at my age.” 

Vespa barks a laugh, elbowing him in the shoulder hard enough to hurt. “Revolutionary on Ranga partnered with a gunslinger who doubled as a talent scout? ‘Course I’d thought about you, kid. You should visit Ranga sometime. See how you’re remembered.”

Nureyev is quiet as the compliment — because it is a compliment, he recognizes, and from Vespa that is a very rare thing — sinks in. “Oh,” he says. 

“Don’t just sit there and stare at me, idiot,” Vespa snaps. She looks over her shoulder, eyes narrowed, and belatedly, Nureyev notices that the gunfire stopped. Vespa’s comm beeps, and she grins. “Ready?”

Nureyev shakes off the disbelief and strange awe, filing that away for future consideration. Later this afternoon, perhaps, once they’ve told Juno what they’d done. “Of course.” 

* * *

_“Little bit to your left, Mista Nureyev!”_

Nureyev looks left and jabs the flashdrive into its port triumphantly. “Done!”

_“All right! Now you got two minutes to get the heck outta there before the places blows!”_

Nureyev stills. “Blows?” 

_“Yeah, blows! Blows up! Goes ka-boom? C’mon, Mista Nureyev, don’t tell me you’ve never—”_

From behind him, Buddy says, “Rita, darling, you didn’t mention the place blowing up.” 

_“Oh, I didn’t? I coulda sworn I did! Well, doesn’t matter now, you got a hundred seconds so you’d better get moving!”_

Rita, bless her heart, hangs up on them.

“Well then, darlings,” Buddy says, bright-eyed and grinning. “I suggest we run.” 

* * *

Ninety-five seconds later, Jet slams the hatch to the Carte Blanche closed. Five seconds after that, the impact rattles against the hull of the ship, and through the portholes Nureyev watches an electric shockwave permanently deactivate all of the technology on the meteor. Were they still in the Scrapyard, he thinks, light-headed, a shockwave of that force would have shattered their eardrums, and scorched them everywhere they’d had tech on their bodies. 

Rita’s cheers echo down the hall. “We did it!” she shrieks, and slams into Nureyev’s waist so hard he stumbles. She unpeels herself just as quickly, vibrating in place. “Thank you, thank you so much, I’ve been wantin' to do that for ages! And we were all so cool, just like the streams!”

“Well then,” Buddy says, stripping off her jacket with practiced ease. “I don’t know about you all, but I’m going to get a nice, refreshing breakfast, and then go right back to sleep.”

* * *

Juno wakes up to an explosion rattling the ship. 

Mentally, blearily, he blames it on Rita, and rolls back over. He reaches instinctively for Nureyev, and when his hand finds nothing but empty sheets he sits up, rubbing at his eye. “Nureyev?” 

There’s no response. He looks over at the bedside table and picks up the note. “‘ _Gone to speak with the Captain’_ ,” he reads, and snorts. “Her name’s Buddy, Nureyev, honestly.” 

He fumbles for his eyepatch, slapping it on his face as he moves through the hall. A passing display reads 0724h, which is _far_ too early for any self-respecting lady to be getting himself out of bed. His jaw cracks in a yawn as he stumbles toward the kitchen, where he can hear a dull clatter of activity. 

Juno frowns. Normally Jet and Vespa would be up at this time, sure, and Nureyev on the days Juno can’t coax him into sleeping in, but he can definitely hear Rita’s high-pitched giggle over the thrum of conversation, and the distinctive clinking of a shot glass couldn’t be from anyone but Buddy.

A little more awake now, and a little more aware that less than ten minutes ago an _explosion_ had rocked the ship, Juno speeds up toward the kitchen. It’s probably not an emergency, since no one had come to wake him up and they’re all in the kitchen instead of the cargo bay, but still.

The door cycles open and Juno hurries through, only to freeze at the sight of them.

The crew looks up, their expressions ranging from surprised to guilty to viciously pleased. They are all _covered_ in rust. Nureyev’s hair looks like he streaked it through with scarlet, and the red on Vespa’s shoulderband is too brown to be anything but blood. Buddy’s hair is matted in the back, a lock singed through with what could only be laser fire, and when he catches her eye she toasts him with a bottle of orange liquor. Jet, who out of the crew has calmly resumed eating his toast, is bleeding from the forehead, just above his eye. 

Rita alone looks unharmed, mouth full of apple juice, and when she sees him she waves enthusiastically. “Good morning, Mista Steel!”

Juno stares. _“What.”_

* * *

Rita’s the one to explain the situation. Which is to say that Rita mournfully bids her warm toasty waffles goodbye, passes them to Jet, and drags Juno to the coffeemaker to excitedly regale him with the whole story.

“Okay, okay, so the THEIA aren’t a problem anymore,” Juno manages finally. “Okay. Sure. I mean, I definitely want to know more about that later, but I also—how did—who even came _up_ with this?” 

“I mean, the plan was mostly mine, Mista Steel,” Rita says, legs swinging as she kicks them against the cabinets. “I’ve been thinkin’ about it for ages, but you know me, boss, I’m real bad at askin’ for help sometimes and I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work on my own! You and me coulda pulled it off, but I, uh....”

“Knew I couldn’t go near the THEIAs again, yeah,” Juno finishes quietly. “Thanks, Rita.” 

“Of course, boss! So anyway, I had this real good plan, but I couldn’t get it to work, so I just made the code real good ‘cause I didn’t want to bother anyone with it while we were still goin’ for the Curemother Prime. Then Mista Nureyev woke me up _real_ early this morning sayin’ he and the Captain were gonna call a family meeting and I said _it’s two in the morning Mista Nureyev_ and you know what he said? He said _I know, Rita, but this is for Juno_ , and it was _so_ sweet, boss, he loves you a whole lot! We all do!”

“I know,” Juno says. “I think I’m starting to really believe that.”

Rita smiles sleepily. “Good,” she says decisively, then clunks her forehead into her sleeve. “Now I’m real tired and I don’t wanna walk.”

“No.”

“Aww, boss!”

“I’m not the one who woke you up at three in the morning.”

“But we did it for you!”

“That doesn’t mean you get to use me as free transportation, Rita!”

“Oh, c’mon, Mista Steel, we all got up _so_ early and I blew up a whole meteor for you and now you never gotta worry about those chippy-things ever again. And that really takes it out of a girl!”

“Fine,” Juno sighs, and Rita shrieks with delight. “But just this once. And I’m not carrying you every time you wake up super early _or stay up super late_ watching streams.”

“Of course, Mista Steel,” Rita says, holding out her arms insistently, and grinning when he picks her up. “This is the last time I’ll ask ever.”

“No it isn’t.”

“No it isn’t,” Rita agrees cheerily, then rests her head on his shoulder and promptly falls asleep.

Sighing, he adjusts Rita in his arms, brushes her hair back into place, and carries her back to her room.

* * *

The kitchen, when Juno returns, is empty, which only solidifies his suspicion that none of his family slept more than four hours last night. Honestly, he doubts Nureyev slept at all.

Outside the long pane of windows framing their kitchen setup, the hazy meteor that once served as a scrapyard drifts against a backdrop of stars. Instead of looking metallic and silver, now it’s a burnt charcoal-gray. Just another rock floating through space. Looking at it, he’d never guess that a control hub for the THEIA project once sat in its core.

Footsteps sound behind him, coming up on his right, and Juno smiles. It took months before Nureyev felt comfortable enough aboard the Carte Blanche to let himself be heard as he walked.

“You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”

He can hear Nureyev’s smile as he sits, their thighs brushing together. “Not a wink.”

Juno looks over at him, and Nureyev’s smile, unguarded in his exhaustion, is fond enough to make his face heat. He swallows down the urge to look away, and instead thinks about how tired Nureyev must be, not having slept in at least twenty-four hours.

“You’re impossible, you know that?”

“Mm.” Nureyev leans forward and tugs him into a kiss. “As are you.”

It seems unbelievable that, just hours ago, his whole family was destroying the last vestiges of a technology that has haunted his dreams for months. He hadn’t even asked them to. They’d just…done it.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Juno says. “None of you did.”

Nureyev tilts his head. Then he says, quietly, “You know, I’d expected it to be much harder than it truly was to prepare everyone for a mission in the dead of night, but the whole crew was quite eager to see this mission through. Seems they took a rather personal offense at your state following Hanataba’s surgery.”

“Stupid,” Juno grumbles.

“It wasn’t our first choice, no,” Nureyev says fondly. “But as that ex-mayor of Hyperion’s is quite dead, this was the next best thing we could do.”

Juno doesn’t know how to feel about this. About any of this. Mostly he just feels strangely…safe. That almost definitely says something messed up about his psyche, that he feels safer aboard a ship run by intergalactic criminals than he has since the first time he and Rita crashed in the office after their first stream night.

He decides not to think about that. Instead he says, gruff, “It can’t have been more than ten hours since you told everyone your name, Nureyev, and now you’re waking them all up in the middle of the goddamn night to blow up a scrapyard. Think the power’s gone to your head.”

“Oh, quite.”

The ship hums as the plotted course changes, the meteor spinning slowly out of view. Somewhere in the cockpit, Juno knows, Jet is giving the consoles a fond pat before recovering some sleep of his own.

Eventually Nureyev’s head drops against his shoulder, and Juno feels more than sees Nureyev’s jaw crack with a yawn. As the last of the scrapyard’s blunted towers disappear, Juno stands, pulling Nureyev to his feet. “C’mon,” he says fondly, as Nureyev’s yawn bares two sharp pointed teeth. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> so anyway juno's new family would do anything for him, thank you for coming to my ted talk, like and subscribe for more nonsense. happy valentine's day all!


End file.
